Spotify ups music discovery with Fresh Finds playlists

PRESS RELEASE:

Following the success of Discover Weekly, the personalised playlist that brings you two hours of custom-made music recommendations every week, Spotify has introduced another way to discover new music.

Updated every Wednesday, Fresh Finds surfaces the latest songs from undiscovered artists that are capturing the world’s interest before the music becomes popular.

Through a combination of man + machine, the playlists within Fresh Finds are an automated curation of bound to break songs across five genres, powered by an analysis of Spotify tastemakers.

Playlists include:

• Fresh Finds (brand new breakout tracks spread across five genres)

• Fire Emoji (hip-hop)

• Basement (electronic)

• Hiptronix (vocal pop)

• Six Strings (guitar driven)

• Cyclone (experimental)

By combining early online buzz across blogs and music news sites with billions of listening hours on Spotify, it can identify anonymous listening patterns around fans that already listen to more up and coming music. These are the tastemakers that are predicting what music trendsetters will soon be listening to.

“Spotify has always focused on artists and listeners, and with Fresh Finds we’re specifically looking at new creators, digging deeper to understand how undiscovered artists can attract a huge fan base,” says Dr. Brian Whitman, Principal Scientist at Spotify. “By analyzing the listening behavior of our top tastemaker users, we’re able to predict new breakout artists and filter their hits-to-be into playlists with the most promising new music out there.”

Five of the artists performing at the recently announced 2016 SXSW Spotify House in Austin were surfaced via Fresh Finds including TOTEM, Kacy Hill, D.R.A.M, MUNA and Anderson .Paak.

Fresh Finds is easily accessible to all users within Browse. The playlists are refreshed with new music every Wednesday.